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Archive Number 27 | ||
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Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 22:18:25 -0700
Andre wrote: > I sense creating space > for people to find and tell their story is at the core of using story as a > healing art. My name is Sally Gillette, and I've been engaged in storytelling for the last few years, with my spiritual director, and on a few lists that I subscribe to. I won't say much now because I'm working on a big project, but I've learned that telling one's story can heal both the teller and the listeners, and I think that's amazing and mysterious and wonderful. I've been through a great deal of trauma in my life, and until the last few years I avoided "looking back" because my life didn't make much sense. I didn't do much recollecting, or story swapping. I had a habit of not "dredging up the past" or even thinking about things that upset me. There was a guardian at the gate of my memory that said "whoa!" whenever my thoughts turned toward the past. And there was anxiety, so constantly churning inside that it sometimes felt like a living thing. A few years ago, I found a wonderful spiritual director who is also a clinical psychologist, and since then I've been telling her my story. The need to tell my story was so powerful that talking to her once a week wasn't enough, and so we worked out an arrangement. For a long time now, I've written 3 pages a week, and she reads them before my appointment. (The font and margins are small, so there are lots of words!) As I've written about my life and feelings and memories and we've discussed what I've written, something magical has happened. I've found my Voice, as she says, but I've also found immense meaning, and patterns, and reasons, and explanations, and knowledge I didn't know was there, and clarity, and wisdom, and, slowly, a different sense of my life and who I am. And somewhere along the way, the anxiety left me. That's all I have time to write now. I just wanted you all to know that I've learned the power of life stories to heal and transform. Sally | ||